


burnout

by wytch-lyghts (flight_on_broken_wings)



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Blood and Injury, Established Relationship, Feelings Realization, Fluff and Angst, Heavy Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-14
Updated: 2019-05-14
Packaged: 2020-03-05 10:51:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,923
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18827173
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flight_on_broken_wings/pseuds/wytch-lyghts
Summary: A shared interest in the arcane and a few throwaway fucks was one thing, had mutual benefit, but the sort of secondhand suffering that curled around his ribcage and currently crippled his ability to speak was the symptom of something else entirely.Caleb tilted his head to the side, lifting his chin just enough to glance sideways at the drow. The low flame of the torch sconces dispersed just enough dull light through the room to play cruelly over ghost-pale skin and scabbed-over gashes like claw marks so deep that multicolor bruises radiated around them. Divine healing magic only did so much when there wasn’t enough to go around.*        *        *        *During the Mighty Nein’s future in Rosohna, it takes one too many close calls for Essik to separate the political from the personal, and to realize just how personal his relationship with the party’s wizard had become.





	burnout

He finds them in the back corner of a tavern that _barely_ qualifies as four walls, a ceiling and floor.

At first glance, the establishment’s dark and ramshackle interior matched the dreary exterior of its patrons, as much goblinoid, beast and orc-kind as drow, which was unsurprising given how far to the exterior of Rosohna the tavern was located. The few who looked up from their cups and conversations looked with distrusting eyes. Typically that sort of caution was reserved for the mantle and robes which mark his station, Essik found. But he wasn’t even wearing that. He opted instead for simpler black robes better suited for scouring through the city’s underbelly, seeing as the Mighty Nein seemed inclined on making his attempt to find them difficult.

But as he weaved through tables and the light crowd and those eyes only moved to follow him so far before returning to whatever occupied their attention before, disinterested, it occured to the Shadowhand that perhaps this was the reason the foreigners ended up sprawling across two booths in the back of this particular bar so far from the inner district in the first place.

Even the sight of their group, beaten and bloodied, heads low, provided the answers to so many of his questions, a simple headcount easing the nervous tension that had been building inside him for the past hour since the Nein had missed their debriefing with the Professor. Word had returned that their most recent mission was a success, but they didn’t make an appearance as expected. By how close of a margin that success was won though, that answer seemed self-evident now also.

It was the tall odd one, Caduceus, he saw him first, eyes sharp and not clouded from the drinking like the monk’s, who caught his approach second. Both were tired looks, but Beau’s had a degree of suspicion to it that the other man’s lacked, ever-cautious and highly protective of their tightly-knit circle.

“The fuck,” she muttered, possibly a question, her chin propped on bruised and cut knuckles whose wrappings were stained dark and falling undone. Essik drifted to a stop at the corner of the booth she occupied, more focused on the wizard seated immediately across from her.

Essik’s eyes jumped across the table top and the tankards and liquor glasses in various states of abandonment which covered it to the man at the other side. A pang of hurt and anxiety shot through his chest, which he only narrowly kept from showing on his face.

Caleb looked as haggard as the rest, shoulders turned inward and weight braced on his elbows atop the rough wood of the table, head hanging low over his crossed forearms. Even in the poor lighting Essik could make out the dried blood splattered across the collar and soaked down the side of his once-white shirt, but from the metallic taste of copper in the air alone he gathered there was more than enough spilt blood to go around. Whose it was though concerned him greatly.

“Indeed,” he returned Beau’s greeting with a polite coolness.

“If you’re here to tell us that we missed our... whatever,” she decided on the word with a dismissive wave, “save your breath.”

“I’m here to make sure you’re all alive,” he said honestly, keeping his eyes from wandering from her. He wasn’t allowed to worry, not like this. “When you didn’t check in, we had no way of knowing.”

“Of knowing what?” she asked, something heated creeping in behind the words.Tilting her head back she quickly downed what was left in her glass, grimacing. “That the Professor sent us into a death trap? Or just that she lied about it.”

“Beau-” a tired, strained voice, Fjord, tried to intercept the anger that was beginning to pour over.

“Shut up, Fjord,” she spat back. “This guy, these _assholes_ -”

Essik stepped back as Fjord entered the picture, pushing himself up from his seat at the outside edge of the booth adjacent with some difficulty. He leaned against the pillar between them casually, but Essik noted he supported a little more of his weight against it than he conveyed. “Who,” he questioned her, motioning to the drow, “Essik? You think it’s his fuckin’ fault? Come on, Beau.”

Fjord looked down at her for a hard moment, and in her posture, Beau relented, aggression fading. Grumbling something under her breath, the monk looked up at him with bloodshot eyes before passing over him to rest on Fjord. There was a wordless exchange there that Essik couldn’t follow, like something private passed between siblings that made him feel he shouldn’t be privy to it in the first place. In fact, everything laid out before him since he’d stepping into their corner of the tavern felt like something he wasn’t meant to see, raw and still bleeding, a kicked dog limping off into the dark to quietly lick its wounds.

Essik’s eyes dropped to the floor, shoulders stiff. He knew these people, was friendly with these people, but he was not one of them, not by a long shot.

“C’mon,” Fjord pleaded softly, “let’s go for a walk.”

With a huff, Beau stumbled out of the booth and stomped off toward the bar, Fjord following on her heels. Leaving only a passed out goblin curled up tightly around a platinum flask in Beau’s side of the booth, those two faded into the low hum of conversation and movement in the room.

As for the rest of the Nein-- Jester, Caduceus, and Yasha-- they seemed content to stay right where they were, leaning into one another slightly more than the confined space of their corner booth required. Caduceus was the only one who even paid Essik any heed, making eye contact for a moment, looking doleful and oddly accepting of the elf’s invasion of their space.

Essik opened his mouth to speak, to say something about why he sought them out or, perhaps returning to task, to ask about the state of the job they’d been sent to do. But his voice faltered, and neutral expression cracked.

This was miserable and dirty and clawed at his chest, leaving an unfamiliar mark where the war had never before managed to personally touch him. A shallow breath escaped him, eyes drawn for a fleeting moment back to the still unmoved Caleb and the world of hurt that caused him, lost for words. But that was apparently all the cleric needed to see. He smiled, warm and genuine though sad, and his eyes dropped back to comfortably half-lid, continuing where he left off gently brushing his hand through a sleeping Jester’s hair. He mercifully ignoring Essik’s sudden floundering, ignoring his presence in a manner only someone accepting of it would. A shepherd does not ignore a wolf among his flock.

Essik dropped into the booth beside Caleb, heart in his throat. The Bright Queen’s inquiry could wait.

The wizard stirred, frown creasing his brow. He hummed quietly, not quite words but indicating that he was not as absent as his stupor suggested.

“Widogast?”

Essik wrung his hands in his lap, not knowing what to do with them, and not wishing to cross a boundary by doing what he wanted to do with them.

A shuddering breath accompanied by the pained tightening of Caleb’s expression had the wizard’s shoulders rising and falling irregularly. He opened his eyes, blinking blurily. “Hm?” he breathed, not quite fixing his gaze on anything but the table.

“I- I don’t-” Essik tried and failed to articulate, what exactly he wasn’t sure.

That he didn’t know what Beauregard was implying? That the suspicion she leveled at him, which reminded him so thoroughly that he was an outsider here, struck him all wrong?

Or that he didn’t know what happened, what was _going_ to happen when he’d last seen him, shooing the man out of his personal study with a few loaners tucked protectively in Caleb’s arms and a poorly suppressed smile tugging at the corner of his mouth, only fondness in the smile Essik returned behind his back.

That he didn’t know if he was allowed to care?

A shared interest in the arcane and a few throwaway fucks was one thing, had mutual benefit, but the sort of secondhand suffering that curled around his ribcage and currently crippled his ability to speak was the symptom of something else entirely.

Caleb tilted his head to the side, lifting his chin just enough to glance sideways at the drow. The low flame of the torch sconces dispersed just enough dull light through the room to play cruelly over ghost-pale skin and scabbed-over gashes like claw marks so deep that multicolor bruises radiated around them. Divine healing magic only did so much when there wasn’t enough to go around.

Essik followed the ugly lines down the side of Caleb’s neck from where they began just cresting his stubble specked jaw to where they disappeared behind the torn and bloodied collar of his coat. A wounded sound pushed its way from somewhere in Essik’s chest. Without his permission, his hand lifted, stopping himself just short of ghosting gentle fingers down the pale column of the human’s throat. Hand hovering uncertain between them, Essik’s golden eyes met Caleb’s sharp blue ones, expression caught somewhere uncomfortably between horror and worry, he was sure.

“Not so bad, _Liebling_ ,” Caleb murmured, barely audible above the surrounding noise if not for their close proximity. One side of his mouth hooked into a wry, self-deprecating grin.

“Caleb,” Essik sighed, “dear. You shouldn’t be here.”

Caleb chuckled, sitting up a little straighter as he pushed away from the edge of the table, Essik’s hand going to his shoulder as Caleb leaned back against the wall. “Where should I be then?” he asked, accent thick from either the drink or exhaustion or both. Head tilted back against the wall, half open blue eyes tracked Essik’s expression carefully, more aware perhaps than it would have seemed.

“You are you friends should be home. Resting,” he chastised quietly. “It’s late, you’re injured, and you’re drinking yourselves under the table at…” He cast an appraising look around. “Here.”

Snorting like that was funny somehow, a sharp grin crawled slowly across his lips. Caleb eyed him sideways, tongue flicking over his split bottom lip. “Tradition,” Caleb said by way of explanation.

Cocking his head to the side, Essik looked with a wordless question.

“When one of us almost dies, we, hm,” Caleb paused, concentration written across his face as he searched for the right words for a long moment. “ _Wie sagt man_ , pour one out for the one who did.” A distant haze fell over Caleb’s eyes.

“I see.” Essik considered that knew information carefully, deciding to return to it later. “And which of you almost died today?” he asked, trying to keep his tone more neutral than he felt.

That wry smile returning, Caleb pulled a hand from where it rested on the table, pointing first at himself, eyes still locked on Essik’s with a sharp half-grin still fixed in place. His eyes slid away to where Nott was curled up across the table, pointing next at her, then looking across the tavern, he vaguely motioned in the direction Fjord and Beau disappeared in.

Essik sighed, mouth a flat line of displeasure. He dropped his hand from Caleb’s shoulder to slowly pull his the collar of his clothing away from the wound to get a better grasp of its severity. Caleb’s eyes drifted shut as gentle fingers brushed over bruises along the exposed column of his throat, a soft sound escaping him on a gentle breath that seized onto something in Essik’s chest. When Caleb’s shirt clung to his skin in a matted mess of dried blood and a splattered black ichor Essik couldn’t identify, causing Caleb to frown with faint discomfort as it began to peel away, he stopped, mentally cursing. Instead, he curled his fingers lightly against the uninjured side of Caleb’s jaw, pushing gently to turn his face to look at him.

Eyes still shut, the furrow of Caleb’s brow eased as he leaned into the touch, murmuring something incomprehensible in Zemnian under his breath.

“Caleb, love, are you with me?” Essik asked, shifting closer in his seat. His thumb swept gently over Caleb’s cheek as concern crept back into the words and into the pit of his stomach.

“ _Nein_ ,” Caleb mumbled, “ _ganz bestimmt nicht_.”

“Caleb, please look at me,” he pleaded, both hands bracketing Caleb’s face now.

Sighing, Caleb begrudgingly opened his eyes a fraction, meeting the drow’s intense gaze. His lips twisting into a frown, Caleb’s fingers wrapped around Essik’s wrist, though he didn’t pull it away as Essik thought he might. He only tilted his cheek into the elf’s palm, blinking the haze away.

“What do you want,” Caleb rasped quietly, voice rough and terribly transparent.

A beat of silence passed.

_Let me take care of you._

_Let me care about you._

_Tell me you understand._

Essik breathed in to steady himself, unable to look away. “Let me help you,” he said instead. “Please.”

Caleb didn’t react, eyes fixed in empty space in the direction of the sleeping Nott, not even visible in the small corner they’d carved out. As Essik brushed the hair falling from its tie out of his face, Caleb blinked slowly, pulling himself back in. His gaze returned to the drow’s face, closer now than when he’d first sat down.

Shuddering, Caleb drew in a breath. He mumbled something in his native tongue, seeming to keep tripping over any others, and nodded faintly as his eyes closed. Drifting forward, Caleb closed the short bit of distance between them and dropped his head into Essik’s shoulder, his temple resting against the soft material of his robes.

A note of surprise slipped from Essik’s lips, his arms automatically wrapping around the man’s shoulders, one hand gently coming up to rest at the back of his neck. Murmuring quiet reassurances in Undercommon, Essik pressed a kiss to the crown of Caleb’s head.

“Easy,” he whispered. “I have you, love. I have you.”

* * *

Essik had wasted powerful spells before-- out of pettiness, out of spite, out of laziness, to prove a point. This was not one of those times.

The Teleport spell was well worth it, for its ease and expediency, and Essik’s desire to forgo the painful struggle which attempting to get a bloodied and not entire present human through the streets of Rosohna would entail. More so for Caleb’s own sake that his, as the man flinched with some of the slightest jolts and pulls.

Essik was becoming greatly concerned about the injuries he couldn’t yet see.

He had made sure to share a brief word with Caduceus before he disappeared with the party’s wizard. Essik didn’t think he would ever get a good read of the firbolg, but his nod seemed, pleased, almost, or at least his look approving. How much exactly he or the rest of the Mighty Nein knew of Caleb and his… relationship, Essik didn’t know, but if any of them did it was likely Caduceus, who was nothing if not observant.

Caleb was surprisingly steady on his feet, and Essik came to the conclusion that while this was certainly not a night to celebrate, nor was it a night to drink to forget. It seemed more like self-medication than anything, alcohol picking up where the last healing potions rattling around in the bottom of Jester’s pink haversack left off. Caleb allowed himself to be lead, swaying gently into Essik’s side. It only took an arm around his waist to guide him in the direction and a shoulder to lean on to get Caleb outside and down the street to a more secluded alley. It did no good to cause a stir by two people vanishing into thin air.

“Hold tight, dear,” Essik murmured against the shell of Caleb’s ear, bracing the less steady man against the world disappearing and recementing beneath them in quick succession. He hugged Caleb against his chest, Caleb burying his face in the hollow of the slightly taller drow’s shoulder and draping his arms loosely around his hips. Casting the spell itself only required a few words.

Feeling the ground pitch beneath them, Essik did his best to keep both of their balance as Caleb pitched forward involuntarily, his fingers digging tightly into the robes at Essik’s back to steady himself.

Opening his eyes to the familiar shelved wall of his bedroom, Essik paused to make sure Caleb had his bearings.

“Alright,” he hummed, stroking his hand over the back of Caleb’s head with other useless comforting platitudes, met only by silence. Slowly he eased him backward, the two of them shuffling together still entwined in the other’s arms like some poor imitation of a waltz until the back of Caleb’s knees hit the bed.

Essik pushed him down to sit on the edge, finding no resistance. Crouching down, he put himself in the way of Caleb’s downcast gaze. Even then he found that even then he couldn’t quite meet him, blue eyes glazed over disconcertingly, and Essik was constantly updating his conclusions about exactly why. He was concerned by the vacant expression Caleb wore, seeming to take great effort to pull himself back to the surface when Essik prodded or sought a response from him. Even then, forming verbal answers proved too difficult, if the various hums and faint nods he’d received meant anything.

“Caleb, love, you’re beginning to frightening me,” Essik admitted, doing everything in his power to keep his voice from shaking. He stroked his thumb over the inside of Caleb’s wrist, looking for any sign he’d been heard. “Please come back. You’re making me think I’ve miscalculated,” Essik laughed nervously, “and if so I’m going to go out and find a healer because-”

Caleb’s hand tightened around Essik’s own wrist, not pulling, just grasping at him. A frown pulled at his brow and the hard line of his mouth, eyes closed. Shaking his head minutely, “ _Nein_ , no,” Caleb mumbled, followed by a string of softly lilting Zemnian that Essik didn’t follow.

“What was that last part, dear?”

Caleb’s breath rattled, his only movement the faint rise and fall of his shoulders.

“Caleb?”

His eyes blinked open, frown deepened in displeasure as his eyes tracked over Essik crouching before him, never quite reaching the drow’s face though. “ _Es tut mir leid, Liebling. Bitte…_ ”

Essik sighed, standing and moving to retrieve the components for Comprehend Languages at least, but Caleb’s grip on him tightened again and this time pulled fractionally. It wasn’t the weak grip but rather the wounded sound that tore from the back of Caleb’s throat, quiet and almost swallowed down, that made him stop though. Essik drifted back to stand between Caleb’s knees.

“Oh, darling,” Essik said, pained, his hands going to either side of Caleb’s face, gently tipping his head back to look up at him. Caleb’s own fingers still clung tightly around his wrist, moving with him and turning his cheek into Essik hand. “You know I-”

“Don’t,” Caleb rasped, his eyes sharp blue as they flew open, panicked and vulnerable and uncertain, and Essik’s world condensed to just this point between them. His heart stammered against his sternum. Caleb’s grip around his wrist tightened, his other hand lifting from his lap to reach blindly for Essik’s robes, twisting into the loose folds of the silky material.

“Don’t what, love?” he asked, thumb sweeping lightly over Caleb’s cheek, stained with dark flecks of blood. “I’m here, I’m going to get you cleaned up, and then you can rest, alright? It’s al-”

“Don’t go,” Caleb said, the words raw and barely audible.

And Essek never knew that a heart could break so quietly.

The breath escaping him, he pulled Caleb closer, burying his hands in his now loose hair as Caleb pressed his forehead against Essik’s midriff, shaking. “I’m not going anywhere,” Essik promised. “Shh, I’m right here.” Caleb’s hands both went to the robes hanging at Essik’s sides, tugging closer, burrowing deeper, eyes closed and breaths panting irregular and warm.

“Right here,” he whispered, desperate to soothe the hollow look in Caleb’s eyes even as the words rang useless in his own ears.

“Right here…”

They stayed like that for… he wasn’t sure how long. He didn’t have Caleb’s annoyingly accurate grasp of the passage of time, and was sure Caleb was in no state to know or care. But it was late, very late, and before letting Caleb pass out right where he sat for the next many some hours-- human sleep patterns were odd to him-- he needed to get him cleaned up at least.

The water was cool and the cloth soft, that at least he made sure of. Prestidigitation was hardly best for cleaning fresh wounds, even in various rapidly progressed stages of healing due to clerical intervention. Gently, so gently, he eased the now tattered outer coat and shirt off Caleb’s shoulders one sleeve at a time, wiping away the gore than matted it to skin until the washbasin ran red. He was as careful as he could be when the tight brush of pain over Caleb’s brow and lips warned against too much movement or pressure, trying not to hiss himself every time what appeared to be an even worse injury was revealed.

Essik continued until he was satisfied that the remaining dark streaks across pale almost porcelain skin in the low light were just livid streaks of bruises and scabbed over gashes across the abused planes of Caleb’s torso. The mess cleaned away, Essik has pleased that wounds looked less immediately life threatening, though he did not like the scope of them, not at all.

The occasional low hum from Caleb in response as Essik continued to talk throughout-- platitudes, quiet reassurances, sometimes Undercommon sometimes Common, sometimes questions about what did or did not hurt-- was all he had to indicate Caleb hadn’t fallen asleep where he sat. Leaning heavily against Essik’s shoulder, eyes closed and breaths steadier against the hollow of Essik’s throat, somehow throughout this entire ordeal Caleb had drifted closer until his back rested against Essik’s chest, his face hidden in the side of his neck.

Tossing the damp towel aside without a care for where it landed, Essik settled back against the pillows at the head of the bed. An arm gently wrapped around Caleb’s midsection, the other hand dragging fingers softly through the damp tangles in his hair, Essik felt each intake of breath by the man half draped over him, felt the solid thrum of his heart beat, more reassuring than it had the right to be.

Suddenly a wave of exhaustion sinking heavier than to mere muscle and bone washed over the drow, and for a moment he felt he understood the human’s compulsion to sleep. To give in to that weight in a manner trancing did not. It burrowed deep into his chest, digging its claws into him, and he gave way beneath it, like he swore he would not so many Dunamancy lessons ago. Essik surrendered to the realization as tangible and heavy and as equally at home as the sleeping man in his arms.

He had done this to himself. He had sought it out, this night and so many prior, with the facade of so many excuses in hand.

But when morning came, there would be no more excuses.

Not for either of them.

**Author's Note:**

> All "Zemnian" derived from google translate, please forgive inaccuracies:
> 
> “Nein, ganz bestimmt nicht.” - "No, most certainly not."
> 
> “Es tut mir leid, Liebling. Bitte… ” - "I'm sorry darling. Please..."


End file.
